


takes one to know one (you're a cowboy like me)

by thisismetrying



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, idk what this is exactly, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:21:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying
Summary: There are seven different words that Beth and Benny think of when they think about the other.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 19
Kudos: 92





	takes one to know one (you're a cowboy like me)

**Author's Note:**

> title from taylor swift's "cowboy like me"

There are seven different words that Beth and Benny think of when they think about the other.

**_Prodigy._ **

They both know what it is like to be labeled a child prodigy.

The thing about that word is that it is both a gift and a curse.

It is playing at 9-years-old against a whole college team and beating them all. And at the end of it, he only feels _bored._

It is playing against a whole chess club and beating them all. And at the end of the day, when she is eating chocolates in the basement with the janitor who is her unlikely mentor, all she can remark on is how _bad_ they are.

But it is an odd thing, to meet another child prodigy. They don’t meet when they are child prodigies. They meet long after, as Townes would say, they are “much too old” to be called child prodigies, but they both still bear that indelible mark on their psyche.

They meet each other and it’s like looking in a mirror. Except it’s one of those funhouse mirrors, where everything is distorted. They meet each other and they see all that they could have been, if things were different.

It is this:

They meet each other and the first thing they really notice in the other person, after taking each other in and recognizing the absolute genius the other is, is how all your _what ifs_ are encapsulated in the other person.

If only your talent had been discovered sooner, you could have played in Europe at the age of nine, instead of some dusty basement. If only you had a mother who cared enough to come to your chess games. If only you were a man, how much easier would it be? If only you had that talent, how much better would he be?

It is seeing all their flaws highlighted, bigger than _Chess Review’_ s analysis of Ruben Fine’s mistakes in _Endgame Analysis._

If only you could stop your hand from taking half your mother’s pills. If only you could stop feeling constantly threatened, that your time at the top is limited, so much so that you keep a knife around just to stave off that feeling. If only you didn’t have a drinking problem. If only you didn’t have a gambling problem.

If only you weren’t a child prodigy. If only you hadn’t been a child with the weight of the world on your shoulders and with more adults caring about the prodigy part than the child part. But if you hadn’t been a prodigy, then who would you even be?

(She thinks.)

(He thinks.)

**_Opponent._ **

He reads about her in _LIFE._ (It’s a picture of her in her girly bedroom, holding one of her many trophies.)

She reads about him in _Chess Review._ (It’s a picture of him on the cover, crouched next to a board, posing like he’s some kind of goddamn model.)

He thinks she shouldn’t have castled in her game against Beltik. She thinks he is arrogant. He’s never met her (and remembered) and yet he is pointing out these errors in her game. She thinks his whole cowboy-pirate-whatever getup is ridiculous. He thinks she is a rising star. She is not afraid of him.

They are opponents, each determined to beat the other, to assert their dominance. Something about this other person is unnerving, as if they can see exactly what you’re about to do, as if they’re sitting on both sides of the table, setting it up and playing it out with themselves. But there is, in fact, another person on the other side.

They are crowned co-champions.

He beats her in Las Vegas, after a tough match.

She thinks bitterly, _this is what I did to others_.

She thinks he is the first person in a long time who has given her a run for her money.

He thinks that he that he won’t be able to hold her off in another six months.

**_Player._ **

Benny watches all of Beth’s games. He tells her as much in Ohio.

Beth reads his book, _Openings & Tactics, _perched on a couch in a second-rate student lounge.

As players, they’re different.

She is intuitive. He is workman-like. She is gifted. He is talented. She is all attack, no grace in her moves. He is all careful moves, plotting the endgame as soon as he heard who his opponent was.

Her strength has always been the middlegame (probably a product of being an orphan, of having so little: you had to be in the here and now. You couldn’t afford to look too, too far ahead). He has always saved his best for the endgame (has had that luxury of being given the benefit of the doubt as a child prodigy, been allowed to wait to show his genius in the endgame).

They play speed chess and he wins the first time.

She thinks _redemption._

He thinks _again._

She asks him if he ever goes over games in his head and the answer is so apparent that he wonders why she even asked it.

It is then that they start to see each other as not just an opponent, but _player_ of the game. Someone who loves the game as much, is just as consumed. It is more than a game for them. It is an art form, it is religion, a form of worship, and they are its acolytes.

She beats him in Ohio, in the game that really matters.

She doubts, after, if she’s good enough for the international stage, if she’s enough of a player to go against four Russian grandmasters.

He asserts that she’s the best there is.

**_Friend._ **

They train together. Ostensibly, it is Benny training Beth. Putting her through the serious chess camp he’s devised.

But Benny learns just as much as she does in those five weeks. He’s too proud to admit it, but he does. He might be the one who pushes the analysis, the repetition of the grandmaster games, but she is the one who can intuit the most clever move, who makes the games of their own that they do play exciting and novel with her attacks.

Neither of them have had many friends in their lives (it might go back to the whole child prodigy thing), but over the weeks, something like a friendship happens.

They live together for five weeks and Benny learns how Beth likes her coffee and Beth learns how Benny likes his eggs.

It’s a friend you talk to about what new errors you found in Fine’s analysis. It’s a friend you talk to about your thoughts on Russian vs. American chess.

They play speed chess, this time with Levertov and Wexler, and she beats them.

She thinks _again._

He thinks _redemption._

And even though the stakes are upped, six times from that in Ohio, and both their pride and egos are on the line, there is something different about this game.

It is just as intense, but it is also the kind of game you play with a friend. On a dirty apartment floor, a friendly bet, with boards that have been shoved in the back of the closet, beer bottles at your sides.

Friends help each other, and accept help from the other.

**_Lover._ **

He asks if she still likes his hair.

She does.

She thinks _so that’s what it’s supposed to feel like._ Because sex has finally been pleasure, it’s become more than just awkward thrusting and waiting for the man to finish

He thinks _she should play the Sicilian._ Because he can’t think of a better way to feel after sex than getting utterly un-self-interested chess advice.

-

She asks him for the money for them to go to Moscow because that is what you can ask of a friend, of a lover.

He chews her out for not coming back to New York, because you can have expectations of a friend, of a lover.

Being lovers is just as much about the miserable _so this is what it feels like without them_ as it is the _that’s what it’s supposed to feel like._

**_Team._ **

He calls her, in Moscow.

She picks up and she is surprised, and overjoyed, and filled with emotion.

He gathers a team for her, her team, the people who have been there all along for her.

She writes down the moves, gratefully, and even when Borgov does something unexpected and the moves don’t help, it’s the reminder that she has a team that keeps her from excusing herself and stuffing a pill down her throat in the bathroom.

It is the realization that Harry and Mike and Matt and Townes and even Levertov and Wexler are her team.

That Benny is her team.

In New York, he waits around with the rest of her team, from that call from Townes that she won.

He thinks _I knew she could beat him._

She thinks _They knew I could beat him._

**_Same._ **

“Beth sees things the same way I do.”

She remembers Benny saying that, once.

At the time, she’d thought he was just saying that to make a point about how the knight move was the right one.

But the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes he was right.

They have different styles and different backgrounds and different fashion sense, but at the end of the day, they are the same, they are one, because of all these things they are to each other: prodigy, opponent, player, friend, lover, team.

They think about each other in the same way.

She comes back from Moscow and lands not in a little Kentucky suburb, but a big gray city.

He opens up the door and finds the person who he can see all the worst parts of himself in.

But it’s okay because the person on the other side is also the one that mirrors _all_ the parts of themselves, the bad, ugly parts, but also the good parts.

_The best there is._

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I don't know exactly what to categorize this except under the heading "these two live in my mind rent free and i'm obsessed and i probably need help" but here ya go. Thanks for reading, as always!


End file.
